Five years ago, then Hadley Selectboard member Christian Stanley got approval for and began the Hadley Climate Change Committee (HCCC) in our town. The first few meetings took place just as the COVID pandemic began and with a handful of fellow citizens we joined together and began brainstorming what we could do to make our town buildings be more energy efficient.

Recently, the HCCC presented to our current Selectboard what we have accomplished over the last year to save the town money on energy costs, make our municipal buildings more energy efficient, and inform our neighbors about important issues.

Worldwide, the year 2024 was the hottest on record based on NOAA findings. Many people in Hadley farm and know exactly what these findings represent: droughts, floods, heat waves, problems in getting things to grow, and issues with the harvest. These ever-rising temperature charts are scary and present problems now and for the future.

Last March, we co-hosted a Farmer’s Roundtable at Plainville Farm. More than 50 people joined us at this event meant to bring farmers and others together to look at how to share ideas on how to deal with climate change and its impact on our crops as each growing season is getting warmer and rains are becoming more erratic and intense. We looked at ideas for irrigation and better drainage. We discussed how we keep diseases from destroying our crops. We also examined how we can protect our employees while they work in the heat, and explored how we can adapt to changing frost events and rising summer heat waves. This was a lot for a meeting, but it pointed our committee in the right direction for some items to look at now and in the future. Members of some local government agencies joined us, too.

As a committee dedicated to making our municipal buildings more energy efficient and thereby reducing energy costs for the town, with the approval of Town Meeting, we supervised and helped expedite Hadley meeting the five criteria needed to become designated as a Green Community by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources. We are now one of the 297 (out of 351) cities and towns in Massachusetts who qualify for Green Communities Grants to help us meet our energy efficiency goals. To get us started we received an initial Designation Grant Award of $130,000. Working with town employees Chris Desjardins, Gary Berg, Scott McCarthy, and Mimi Kaplan from PVPC, we determined upgrading to LED lighting at the wastewater treatment plant, installing new insulation at Hopkins Academy, adding weatherstripping and replacing some of the entrance doors at Hopkins Academy and the Hadley Elementary School are the best uses for our initial grant. This work will commence as soon as these projects receive final approval from Mass DOER.

We are helping with the process of getting solar panels installed on the Hadley Senior Center and investigating the possibility of installing a solar array on the former town landfill. The landfill is an area that is previously disturbed, large in size, and not used as farmland or forest. Designated as a brownfield, the landfill is a very appropriate spot for solar for our town. We are doing our best to move those projects forward.

Over these last few years, our committee has also connected with the Hadley schools. Members of the 7th grade class at Hopkins Academy, working with their teacher Susan Duncan, made another collection of roadside signs, which the DPW has installed, reminding citizens and visitors to Keep Hadley Clean and Stop Dumping Trash in our town. We take this idea even further with our annual Hadley Spring Clean Up Day, which we just held for a fifth time.

Members of the committee have learned so much in five years. We have made some great gains, and there’s still much work to be done.

Jack Czajkowski lives in Hadley.